The Saturday Night Live skit about Cee Lo Greene’s song is on Hulu. I take it as a commentary on the value of speech and two tier theories of speech protection. It is also relevant to FCC v Pacifica which we will read in a week or two.

Several new articles that, read together, link many of the themes of the last few weeks of “Principles” and offer myriad examples of ways in which the breakdown of legal control over police power is something that potentially affects everyone (and, sadly, their dogs).

Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a “war,” and the consequences are predictable. These policies have taken a toll. Among the victims of increasingly aggressive and militaristic police tactics: Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Md., whose dogs were killed when Prince George’s County police mistakenly raided his home; 92-year-old Katherine Johnston, who was gunned down by narcotics cops in Atlanta in 2006; 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda, who was killed by Modesto, Calif., police during a drug raid in September 2000; 80-year-old Isaac Singletary, who was shot by undercover narcotics police in 2007 who were attempting to sell drugs from his yard; Jonathan Ayers, a Georgia pastor shot as he tried to flee a gang of narcotics cops who jumped him at a gas station in 2009; Clayton Helriggle, a 23-year-old college student killed during a marijuana raid in Ohio in 2002; and Alberta Spruill, who died of a heart attack after police deployed a flash grenade during a mistaken raid on her Harlem apartment in 2003. Most recently, voting rights activist Barbara Arnwine was raided by a SWAT team in Prince George’s County, Md., on Nov. 21. The police appear to have raided the wrong house.

You have probably seen this video from UC Davis. This is what we mean when we ask about the relationship between law and order, look at limits on the utilization of violence by police, and identify collaborators and victims.

Or Berkeley last week, including an understated chant, “stop beating students.”

And it is worth considering whether collaborators can be caught up in events and turned into victims by a Chancellor and a police chief who will try to save their own jobs by throwing underlings under the bus. These events raise many questions about rule of law and the boundaries of legitimate exercise of force. As of today (Monday) two of the UC Davis officers are on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation, I suspect others will follow, perhaps even Chancellor Katehi.